Workplace details

A first aid assessment has to be reviewed with the joint health and safety committee (or a worker H&S rep) and re-done whenever conditions at the workplace change. Recording who was consulted and when is what makes this assessment valid, not just a completed worksheet.

Step 1 — Number of workers

Schedule 3-A's tables are keyed off the greatest number of workers present on any one shift at this location — not your total headcount. A busy Saturday shift with extra casual staff counts, even if it's unusual. Use the highest number that realistically happens.

Step 2 — Hazard rating

Every WorkSafeBC classification unit (CU) has a base hazard rating of Low, Moderate, or High. That's your starting point — but it's not automatically the right rating for this location. If the work actually done here isn't typical of your CU (for example, a waste-collection crew doing elevated bucket-truck work or work near live electrical lines), the rating you use for this assessment must be raised to match the real hazards — it can never be set lower than your CU's assigned rating just because this location feels safer.

Check this only for a location where people just do office/admin work with none of the industry's usual hazards — e.g. a head office, not a yard or job site. Everywhere else, work through the classification unit questions below the same way WorkSafeBC's own worksheet does.

Step 3 — Workplace class

"Remote" isn't about how far the location feels — it's specifically about whether a BCEHS ambulance can reach the workplace by road within 30 minutes under normal conditions. A yard 40 minutes from town by highway is not remote. A site an ambulance can't physically drive to at all — down a resource road it can't use, across water, or up a slope with no vehicle access — is. If you're not sure how long BCEHS would actually take, that's worth finding out rather than guessing.

"Less accessible" is separate from remote — it's about whether BCEHS attendants could physically get to the worker once they arrive on site. This is exactly where elevated and electrical work belong: a worker up in a bucket truck or on a temporary platform, or working near live lines, may be reachable by road but not reachable by first aid attendants without special access, rescue equipment, or a trained rescuer. Check every area below that applies — don't skip one just because it seems minor.

If you checked an elevated-work or electrical/confined-space item here, go back to Step 2 and confirm your hazard rating still reflects it — this is often where a Moderate-rated CU should really be treated as High for this location.

Additional first aid factors

These factors don't have their own line in Schedule 3-A's tables, but WorkSafeBC expects you to weigh them anyway — they can be the reason you provide more than the bare table minimum, or the reason you document why you didn't need to. If a worker up a bucket truck would need specialized rescue equipment to get down, or your crew handles injuries the wider industry doesn't typically see, this is where that gets recorded.

What's actually provided today

Everything so far has established what Schedule 3-A requires. This step is about what's actually on site right now — kits, attendants, a first aid room, transportation arrangements — so the review step can show you plainly where you already meet the requirement and where there's a gap to close.

Minimum required by Schedule 3-A